Harvard’s Bizarre Take on Homeschooling

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The comments in the link to the actual article by O’Donnell are the best. She is so wrong it isn’t funny. It sounds like she has done no actual research and uses extreme anecdotes to color her narrative.
 
Forum comments about an article about an article about a paper from somebody.

Here’s a math question for the homeschooled children: How far removed from the original source can my opinion be before it’s irrelevant?
 
For every story about homeschool parents being abusive or incompetent, you can easily find a story about school teachers being abusive or incompetent.
 
The difference with homeschooling is that there is less oversight and accountability.

I’m just saying what homeschoolers who survived abuse and were minimally educated are saying.
 
It does, Jim, that’s what I was referring to earlier, but someone else had a problem with my doing so.
 
22 year old people who have finished 4 years of college and have a kid ratio of 30 to 1. Yeah, way better than a parent!
 
1Lord1Faith said:
Forum comments about an article about an article about a paper from somebody.

Here’s a math question for the homeschooled children: How far removed from the original source can my opinion be before it’s irrelevant?
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No kidding…

The issue at the very core of the original article has some merit in that the more isolated we make ourselves, the more prone to radicals we become.

Socialization helps prevent a lot of those ills.

I want my kids to see different perspectives and not just from a certain social group, ergo they go to public school.
 
They’re just afraid their left-wing worldview is being undermined.
redbetta said:
For every story about homeschool parents being abusive or incompetent, you can easily find a story about school teachers being abusive or incompetent.
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Just scroll down this account. These horror stories are just in America alone.
https://twitter.com/LeavePubSchool
I’ve never been homeschooled myself but these attacks on homeschooling have little to do with children’s welfare. Rather it’s about ideology. Public schools are being used to promote certain views at the expense of learning useful things and if parents start spending too much time with their children, their indoctrination won’t be as effective.
 
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Harvard is apparently having a summit on the dangers of homeschooling this summer. Interesting how this is happening now that parents all over the country have become homeschoolers whether they wanted to or not. Maybe these academics are terrified that this pandemic will dispel a lot of preconceived notions about homeschooling and warm more parents up to the idea of homeschooling themselves. Especially if they have never really taken a good look at their children’s curricula before: they might be surprised at what constitutes “education” in our schools these days.
 
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Hume said:
The issue at the very core of the original article has some merit in that the more isolated we make ourselves, the more prone to radicals we become.

Socialization helps prevent a lot of those ills.

I want my kids to see different perspectives and not just from a certain social group, ergo they go to public school.
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Good homeschooling exposes children and teens to many different people and groups.

In our city, there are several large (thousands of kids) homeschool Co-Ops, and they do all kinds of things–they have theater, choirs, football teams that travel, and they are involved in many community charities and activities. They also meet with people of different religions and learn about other faith practices.

It’s the public schools that generally isolate children in a world in which religion does not exist, and scholarship is limited to what is “safe” and “politically-correct” and “inclusive”–above all else, inclusiveness is valued–but not inclusion of conservative-leaning families or practicing Christians or people who believe in the 2nd Amendment or kids who prefer classical music to hip-hip, or girls who really truly DON’T like STEMC and are more interested in learning to cook and sew (which have suddenly become valuable skills now as we need more face-covering masks and everyone is staying home and eating their own cooking!)
 
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Peeps said:
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Hume:
The issue at the very core of the original article has some merit in that the more isolated we make ourselves, the more prone to radicals we become.

Socialization helps prevent a lot of those ills.

I want my kids to see different perspectives and not just from a certain social group, ergo they go to public school.
Click to expand...
Good homeschooling exposes children and teens to many different people and groups.
Click to expand...
Sure, but that’s just a pie-in-the-sky “No True Scotsman”.

My property taxes last year were $2500. It didn’t, but let’s pretend the whole shebang went to schools rather than mostly to city/county government.

Could I provide the same enrichment to my 3 kids for 9 months on $2500 that the school does? $833 per kid? About $100 per month per kid?

Not. On. Your. Life.

So at this point, we’re talking about money. If you have the cheddar to put more into your kids, then they’ll probably be fine regardless what you do. The biggest driver for what class tier you end up living in is the tier your parents occupied. We love to tell each other about all the wonderful exception to that, but referencing the population as a whole, social mobility is rather rare.
In our city, there are several large (thousands of kids) homeschool Co-Ops, and they do all kinds of things–they have theater, choirs, football teams that travel, and they are involved in many community charities and activities. They also meet with people of different religions and learn about other faith practices.
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With you there. There are many more enrichment opportunities in a city.
It’s the public schools that generally isolate children in a world in which religion does not exist,
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In my public school experience, religion existed.

Just not mine alone.
and scholarship is limited to what is “safe” and “politically-correct” and “inclusive”–above all else, inclusiveness is valued–but not inclusion of conservative-leaning families or practicing Christians or people who believe in the 2nd Amendment or kids who prefer classical music to hip-hip, or girls who really truly DON’T like STEMC and are more interested in learning to cook and sew (which have suddenly become valuable skills now as we need more face-covering masks and everyone is staying home and eating their own cooking!)
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Well, you and I have different standards for what public school is trying to achieve. I don’t send my kids to public school so they can raise them for me. I send them to learn about math, science, reading, writing and social skills. Maybe throw in an instrument or a soccer ball. That’s about it.
 
Hume said:
The issue at the very core of the original article has some merit in that the more isolated we make ourselves, the more prone to radicals we become.
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Here’s the problem.
Who gets to decide which ideas are the “radical” ones?
 
And how many of the ideas and values that we have come were considered “radical” at one time?
 
So, an opinion piece by one person is the stand of the entire institution of Harvard. Sigh, looks like NCR has been taking some headline writing tips from LSN 😦
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
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Hume:
The issue at the very core of the original article has some merit in that the more isolated we make ourselves, the more prone to radicals we become.
Click to expand...
Here’s the problem.
Who gets to decide which ideas are the “radical” ones?
Click to expand...
We each get to do that.

I don’t foresee it being made illegal any time soon, so I’m not sure what the problem is.

Point is, kids usually miss out on quite a bit when they’re homeschooled. And no wonder. Socialization is as much an education as their formal curriculum.
 
Good case in point:

My wife has two cousins. Wealthy household, dads a surgeon, mom stays at home. Homeschooled the kids.

Graduated HS in their early teens. Finished bachelor’s degrees at a private college before 20.

Impressive, right?

But their social lives were a wreck. Church was the only real socialization they regularly got and they were so much younger than their compeers at university that they weren’t part of the college dating pool. Consider that when many of us who go to college also find our spouses there.

She ended up cohabiting with a guy 20 years her senior and her brother JUST got married.

Even on my side of the family, I always considered my homeschooled cousins to be just a little odd.
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Granted, every experience is unique. But there’s a cost to homeschooling kids, whether we want to admit it or not.
 
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Do you even know any homeschoolers? Because the ones I’ve met have experienced more and have had more of a social life than I had growing up. Ask the homeschooled people on this forum if they feel like they have missed out on anything.
 
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